


Difficult Times

by Numina



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Feels, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 22:55:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14067369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numina/pseuds/Numina
Summary: Loki and Sif had a thing for a little while. Not a big thing. Just a bit of fun, really. After all, when the space between eighteen and twenty-five is a couple hundred years, lots of stuff happens. It didn't mean anything to either of them, surely.





	Difficult Times

“People need a sense of continuity, though. Maybe it seems oppressive now, but the traditions we live with help people to feel safe,” Sif smiled with that motherly certitude that told Loki she was quoting. Motherly wasn’t really her nature. But she didn’t simper at him when he was grumpy. He appreciated that, and the way she caressed his chest along the edge of the sheet as she said it.

He grimaced all the same, “You sound like your mother. Anyway I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sif grinned and pretended to pinch him reprovingly, “You’re the one that brought it up.”

“Well, yes, I wanted to complain about it, not talk about it.”

She rewarded his glibness with an exasperated sigh, rolling onto her back and gathering the sheet up over her breasts. He turned his head to watch the smile slowly fade off her profile. Her mother’s platitudes exorcised, she glanced over, “Am I really making you so unhappy?”

Her eyes were so sincerely soft and liquid brown, he didn’t have the heart to do anything but lie, “No, it’s fine. I just like to complain and you’re the only one that will let me. If I complain to father it’s an hour’s terse lecture. I complain to mother and she makes my moods out to be some thinly veiled universal truth. I complain to Thor and he makes himself a nuisance trying to fix it,” he shook his head, rolling over and pulling down the sheet to disrupt his melancholy, tracing at her nipples and giving one a teasing flick that made her snatch his wrist and squeeze. He sunned her with an honest smile, “Do I look unhappy?”

She smiled more like herself and pulled him closer, one hand on his waist to urge him over on top of her again, “I’d still like to make sure.”

He let her tip his hips between hers but groaned, “Sweet Surtur, you’re insatiable.”

“I should hope so, given that it’s the only thing we have in common.”

He shook his head, “I’m going to have a reputation as the worst tutor in the known universe if anyone corners you to do any magic. Five months of weekly lessons and you still can’t light a candle without two hands and a match.”

She looked him steadily in the eye with a wry fatalism, caressing his long back idly, “I wouldn’t be any better if we’d actually been doing what we were supposed to, I promise. And we’d both be miserable into the bargain. I’m utterly hopeless at magic.”

He longed to contradict her bitter self-assessment but had no grounds, “I figured your mother had to be pretty desperate, when she asked me to help you.”

Sif shrugged, “She was a little desperate in general after she found that sword in my room. But you were her first choice. I think she thought you’d be able to get through to me, since we’re friends.”

Her body was so primed to his that they barely had to shift to fit together and he could fuck her like kissing, slow and deep and lingering, as if burying himself in her were just another stage of foreplay, “Well,” he sighed, “she wasn’t wrong.”

Sif laughed and wrapped her legs around his hips, rocking lazily.

The third time was definitely his favorite, in their clandestine routine. It was the one they made last the longest, the one where they just did as they liked, and could talk while they did it. The first was always hot and limbic, the breaking of the dam after scrupulously ignoring one another for an entire week, both of their bodies racked with waiting. She’d enter his rooms and they’d screw against the door, or on the table by the door, or on the floor under the table. The first was almost a fight; raw and exhilarating, practiced grips and hungry lunges at the gaps in each others’ armor. The second time was more of a rematch, met by agreement on the honorable plane of the bed after a drink of water and some actual chat, a little on the polite and necessary side, scrupulously naked and attentive to form. The fourth, as usual, would be just a little frantic, triggered by the realization that they were almost out of time, spurred on by fear of appearances, uniquely spiced with that last little bit of transgression, the togetherness of boon companions in a secret war against being told what to do.

The third time, though, was a different world, where he could really savor the odd frisson of their energies and they could play at lying without any real consequences. By the third time, they were both fully protected from reality in the warm mental haze of sexual exertion and its highly-evolved chemical rewards, the kind of mental fog that pretended to be love and swore to be forever.

She writhed under him, her hair as golden as a magic apple and her lips as sweet, the pleasure they took in each other swelling just as slowly. His mind began spinning away on fancies but he wanted all of himself to stay in her arms. They got so little time.

“Can we play a game?” he murmured.

She nodded, “Which one do you want?”

“Where I beg you for things we both know are wrong, and trust you to tell me no.”

“You like that one.”

“I just like to say them out loud. I don’t actually want to commit treason or deceive you. Call it a moral bondage fetish. Spot me?”

She bit her lower lip, “Promise to make it as difficult as you can.”

He plucked at one nipple with the tips of his teeth, “Most definitely.”

“Do I get a turn?”

He rolled his hips into her and purred, “Do you truly think I would refuse you anything that’s mine to give right now?”

She grinned at his flattery, “Go ahead.”

He gazed into her eyes, his voice freighted with sincere urgency, “We should run away together.”

She shook her head, smiling sadly, “Thor would miss us.”

“We’ll take him with us.”

“He’d never go.”

“We could kidnap him.”

“He’s too strong.”

“We could fool him. Claim it’s a quest. Go to Jotunheim. Fake our deaths. I’d hide us from Heimdall. We’d go to Midgard. Be pirates or something.”

Sif kissed him passionately, slipping in her duty to refuse him immediately, to hold him safe as he struggled against their bonds, “Asgard needs him. And you, too. We have to stay.”

He thrust into her a little more vigorously, trying to disrupt her objections, “Then swear you’ll love me forever.”

Her body trembled but her voice stayed incredulously even, “I’m not going to live forever.”

“Tell your mother about us. Be my consort.”

“There is no ‘us’. I’m as good as betrothed to Thor.”

He grinned wickedly, “Marry us both.”

She grinned back, “That’s not a thing.”

“When Thor is king he can do whatever he wants.”

“You know that’s not true. One king can’t just-” her eyes fluttered closed and she squeezed his ass wantonly as he shifted his grinding a little wider, though she soldiered on valiantly, “-go around undoing the norms of his predecessors to suit himself. The throne is the burden of keeping a hundred thousand years of Asgardian laws. Nothing more.”

He admired her steadfastness. She was going to be a wonderful queen, “Your turn.”

She was quiet for a little while, just moving with him, “I’m desperately in love with you.”

He smiled. She knew how much he loved to hear it, “You're not. You barely like me. You’re just high on cock and transgression.”

She squeezed the back of his neck, staring up at him and panting, her voice heavy with the kind of beautiful pristine earnestness untouched by anything as grubby as truth, “I adore you. I would die for you. I would kill for you.”

The sound of it sang through his blood, stroking his ego as smoothly as he stroked into her, “I don’t want you to,” I want you to live for me, he thought, grinning inwardly at his own reflexive arrogance. I want you to worship me.

“Tell your father you want to be king instead of Thor. Demand a trial of your worth, if that’s what it takes to keep me.”

Loki laughed through shorter and shorter breath, “I don’t want to be king, and he would literally murder me for suggesting it.”

“Tell Thor, then. Invite him to join us here in your bed next week.”

Loki opened his mouth to refuse her, but his body spilled over and he shuddered down into her bosom, hissing objections and curses, surging in long slow waves that he couldn’t gather back. “Shit,” he rested his forehead on her sternum, suffering through the glorious aftershocks as she stroked his short, dark hair, “Oh...ohhhhhhh...sorry.”

She sighed appreciatively, “Don’t be, it’s fine. Do you have any idea how appealing it is when you let go? The taciturn master magician?”

He shrugged, not looking up, “I really wasn’t done, is all,” he began kissing down her body to the golden thatch between her legs, tasting and nuzzling her skin with a voracious tactile hedonism, “I think my cock is getting too familiar with our routine, skipping ahead. Greedy little bastard. I prefer the journey,” he thought about rhapsodizing to her on why their third coupling was generally his favorite, but he was trying to be better about lecturing. It was unlikely that she really loved him enough to find his Deep Insights entertaining.

She sighed deep as Loki began to finger her swollen petals, “You owe me a rejection.”

He put his tongue to her instead, her dusky sapor mingled with his brackish alkaline musk. He laved the full length of her thickly engorged slit with an obsessive zeal. She was so close, he didn’t want to stop long enough to refuse her anything. Of course he would bring Thor to bed with them the next time. He relished the thought of how much louder she would moan if she was lying in Thor’s lap being fondled while Loki suckled her clit. He brought her off slowly, intimately, savoring the journey of her body after his had been bolted too hastily. Control over his appetites was always a struggle. Even with his magic, power was never the problem. He had trouble holding out when he meant to, and he had trouble letting go even when he needed to.

As she crept close to breaking he got his knees under himself, knowing, as she dug her nails into his shoulders that she was going to come rough, her whispers growing higher and tighter, her energy slamming against his like heavy music and the scent of molten rock. He thrummed appreciatively against her skin, thrilled by his gentle lady’s ungentle reflexes. He clamped his lips tightly to her as she began to buck, bearing down on her as she rolled and cried out. When she finally unclenched and subsided utterly, he pitched up and crashed beside her, feeling spent as well. She turned to wrap herself around him like an octopus, suckering little kisses all over his chest. He grinned and chuckled at the prim and sniffy Lady Sif being...adorable. Cuddly. Sensual. Warm. Kind. For him, of all people. Number three really was a different world. But coming out the other side of it was always a little sobering. The beginning of the end, always too soon.

He cleared his throat, “He wouldn’t even if we asked, and being asked would make him uncomfortable.”

Sif was dreamily fingering a small red crescent in his shoulder where her nail had bitten in, “Hmm?”

He smiled softly, “Thor.”

“What? Oh. Right...” she trailed off on an odd tone.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No really, what?”

She shook her head, sitting up and stretching, “Nothing. It’s out-of-bounds. It’s nothing.”

He stretched in kind and laced his fingers behind his head, “Out of bounds describes this entire situation.”

She leaned back down on her elbow, “Pulling a thought from the let’s-have-ruinous-thoughts game and making it a real conversation seems against the spirit of the thing.”

“If you want to talk about it let’s talk about it.”

“I don’t. You’re right, he wouldn’t. And it might...hurt him.”

He knew exactly what she meant, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” she rolled her eyes at him accusatively, “A drunken night after a battle and a carouse is one thing. This,” she swallowed up his entire field of vision with those liquid brown eyes again, gesturing between their naked, sex-slicked bodies, “We know this is just fun, killing time and skipping pointless work, but it would look like more to him. Between his brother and his intended. It would hurt him. Or at least embarrass him.”

Loki nodded, glancing away, “No, I know.”

“And sparing that, it would still be different. It would probably just ruin the memory.”

Loki squinted at her, “Is that what we’re doing? Ruining a memory?”

“What? No.”

His chin retracted, “Then what are you talking about? Why would sleeping with Thor ruin that memory if sleeping with me doesn’t? Did you forget I was there?”

Sif blushed, “I didn’t mean that I just meant...trying to recapture that...dynamic...I don’t know. Don’t get jealous.”

He scoffed a little too hard, “I’m not jealous. I just don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“Just what I said. That bringing it up to him again would be a mistake.”

“Then why did you bring it up with me?”

She gave an exasperated huff, her high brow furrowing, “Because it was just the game.”

“No, I meant in the first place. Why did we start-” he gestured between them, “-this. Why was this alright but that wouldn’t be?”

Sif’s rare smile was so radiant it almost annoyed him, “Well, because you’re so much smarter than he is. And braver. And kinder. And sexier.”

Gratification prickled him despite the obviousness of the dodge, and he reached across to take her by the waist, pulling her until she consented to straddle his lap on her knees, “Don’t handle me. I don’t like it.”

She stroked the gooseflesh on his forearm, “Oh, clearly.”

He swatted her on the buttock just hard enough to make a decent sound. She stayed perfectly poised, looking down at him with a small knowing smile that stopped short of arrogance or indulgence. He shook his head. She was going to be an amazing queen. Except for not knowing a single shimmer of magic. That was going to be a problem. Still, he pictured her sitting astride his brother just that way, making him happy, making him heirs, making him a true king. And he did feel an acute stab of envy, but not just for Thor.

His mood turned melancholy again just as his obnoxious, young, and oblivious body was cheerfully volunteering itself to her ladyship’s service again. He lifted a hand and ran it speculatively, prayerfully down her frame, “So how do we end this pattern we’re in. Before it becomes a problem.”

She caressed him in kind, “I expect one of us will get bored before too long. I sort of hope both of us get there at the same time but I’ll survive if it’s just you. It’s the thought of stopping when we’d both rather continue that strikes me as unworkable. I’m sort of stubborn like that. But I get that this isn’t forever. Don’t worry.”

He felt the sweetest and most incongruent stab of fraternal affection for her, rubbing his hands appreciatively over the globes of her ass and gazing at her, “I have such a fondness for you, Sif.”

She looked pleasantly surprised, leaning down and kissing him almost chastely, “And I you.”

He exhaled slowly as she rose up and lowered onto him again. She was goddamn insatiable, for as much as that term applied to strictly reserving their copulations to two hours every week. Her sweet, firm insides squeezed him eagerly. He ground into her once slowly, his whole body begging him to draw out the deep lapping pleasure of physical communion far longer than he knew they had to spend. He bent up his knees to get purchase to thrust, but she put her hands on them and eased them back down, smiling, “I told my mother we were close to a breakthrough and I might be as much as an hour later today,” she folded herself down over him luxuriantly, caressing his chest with her shining silken hair, “we don’t have to hurry.”

He stared at her, slightly baffled, “Why would you do that?”

“You seem to like it slower. As long as we’re having this," she sheathed him deep, decisively, and shivered with pleasure, "I feel like we ought to really have it.”

She laughed at the sharply mischievous look that spread across his face, and how it dissolved into a trembling gasp as she ran her nails down his sides. She murmured in his ear, “Trust me to take you slowly?”

He nodded, eyes screwed closed, breathing deep into his belly, “If you insist.”

She showered attention on his neck and shoulders, taking his cues as he gripped her hips and whispered rough nonsense, twisting above him like a charmed snake. He managed to hold off as she broke herself on him again, hardly pausing. The languorous silken friction built so slowly he almost forgot to breathe, the enormous heat inside him pressing his lungs and loins, aching to be let go. He gasped, uncertain whether he was about to fly apart, “Sif...Sif...I…” I love you, I love you, I love you, you’re mine, mine, you’re mine, I love you...

She neither sped nor slowed, but laid her chest down against his, holding him together, her eyes alight with an impish gratification he recognized.

“Sif...I...I…”

She nodded breathily into his ear, “I know, I can feel how ready you are. Do it. Let go.”

He shrieked helplessly, his body somehow finding enough liquid to pump out a load that left him feeling utterly drained and impossibly light, one fatal fanged word echoing around inside him as the spasms finally eased.

_Mine._

Just a chemical illusion, he breathed slowly as she settled into the crook of his arm at his side. Just an intense limbic instinct, an evolutionary bonding relic. Possessiveness. Desperation. Mammals fixate on strange things. It didn’t mean anything. He wouldn't let it ruin their lives. It would fade.

Except she was already telling bigger lies to spend more time with him. Reckless, unsupportable lies.  

And he ought to have gotten bored well over a month earlier. Really, she was so vanilla.

Slowly he sat up and snatched her tunic up off the corner of the bed, tossing it to her as she rubbed her eyes, still glowing.

He took a deep breath, weighing his voice carefully before launching it, “I’ve had a thought.”

She was grinning, “What? When? How?”

He resisted the urge to swat at her, “I was just thinking about the problem and I realized...you really should be with Thor.”

He didn’t look at her. The lightness of her response didn’t match with the weight of the pause preceding it, “How do you mean?”

“I mean days like today. Instead of blowing off your magic lessons for a cheap thrill,” he turned to her, smiling pleasantly at his own cleverness, “You could just as easily sneak off to meet with him. For warrior training.”

Her badly concealed cloud of disappointment parted and a ray of something passionately hungry shone through, “You...you think he’d do that? Train me to be a warrior in my own right?”

Loki nodded, reflecting and magnifying her own enthusiasm back at her, “I think he would love it. You’re never going to be any good at magic, but if you’re going to be queen someday, you need to give people a reason to fear you. And for all that he seems like an intemperate oaf-”

Sif nodded, turning her back so he could buckle her ill-suited mage leathers, “He does love teaching.”

“Exactly.”

Her smile flinched, “What about-” she gestured between them, “-this?”

He shrugged, “What about it?”

She smiled, her nose crinkling a little, “I’ll miss it.”

He shook his head airily, “Probably not as much as you think. I mean, this has been so much fun. I’ll probably miss it a little too, but I’m getting the feeling it’s time. End on a high note. I’ll put the idea to him tonight and have an answer for you by lunch.”

He walked her to the door, trying not to let his knees wobble. She kissed him goodbye, lingering for an unbearable beat, and was gone.

He latched the door, firming the privacy spells and soundproofing charms. Then he slid down the door to sit on the floor, closing his eyes and breathing carefully. Let go, he whispered harshly to the clenched spot in his mind, the cramp in his heart, his tight fist coming down on the flagstones over and over. Let go, damn you.


End file.
